Haarlem ca. 1562/63 – Haarlem 1640
A Dutch Triple Master and English Ship in choppy Waters, with a Whale and a Sea-Monster
Signed ‘VROOM’ on the middle stripe of the Dutch flag
Oil on canvas
H. 48 cm. W. 65,5 cm.
PROVENANCE
European private collection
CATALOGUE NOTE
Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom credited with being the founder of Dutch marine art of sea scape paintings. Beginning with the birds-eye viewpoint of earlier Dutch marine paintings, his later works show a view from lower down and a more realistic depiction of the seas themselves. Much of what is known of his life comes from his biography by Karel van Mander, who devoted four pages to him in his Schilder-boeck, which reads as an adventure story. He started as a pottery painter. No older than nineteen, he rebelled against his stepfather who insisted he stick to pottery painting, by boarding a ship for Spain and from thence to Florence and Rome. In Florence he was patronized around 1585-1587 by Cardinal Fernando de Medici, later Grand Duke of Tuscany and became a pupil of Paulus Bril. He was back in Haarlem in 1590, the year he married, before travelling to Danzig (now Gdansk) to visit his uncle Frederick Hendriksz Vroom, who was city architect there.